Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City released in Japan last week and was the top-selling game for the week, beating out sales of the recent Resident Evil: Revelations, at over 252,000 copies on the PlayStation 3 alone. Following at #2 was Mario Party 9 for the Wii with close to 153,000 copies.

At #4 was Gust’s latest, Ciel no Surge, for the PlayStation Vita, with over 33,000 copies sold. That having been said, Ciel no Surge is also being met with a harsh reception. 4Gamer’s reader reviews section gave it an average of 31/100 last we checked, and scores on Amazon appear to be neatly divided among the various star ratings.

I guess 33.000 for Ciel is not bad? That is some low scores though. Not that we should particularly care about Amazon reviews. Remember DQ9.

Anyway, I find it interesting that ORC surpassed Revelations. Even if the 3DS certainly had a lower installed base, one would think japanese players would mostly stay away from shooters. Perhaps all those COD games have finally started convincing them?

brian yep

I looked up that stuff about DQ9, but it made me curious.
Do we know if it was just people spamming reviews?

Anyway, is gust’s fault for releasing the game and having server problems, tho i can’t say its their fault, since it might had just be because, stuff just happens, most of the time since it’s release date was on maintenance (today supposedly this was all fixed, quoting gust) and also said they gonna release a patch soon for the bugs that make Ion appear in weird places.

Now that i think about it, their main page went down as well, i guess they put CnS’s connection in the same server as their Main page… can’t say its a good idea… but oh well.

Im pretty sure the low rankings are just people disgusted with all those problems, since i really, seriously, doubt, there were -many- people, that got the game, without knowing at least what to basically expect of it…

You would be surprise at the number of Japanese players that play FPS’s its not all JRPGS and dating sims with them I don’t know why people think they don’t touch them.

Solomon_Kano

I doubt Call of Duty had much to do with it since big TPS games seem to find a consistent level of success in Japan. Uncharted, Binary Domain (though that was from a popular studio, admittedly), some others I’m forgetting.

Updated the wording on CnS slightly. Reader reviews are still coming in. It’s at 31/100 now.

Herok

Glad to see the increase in vita sales maybe now we can get more games for it.

usagi_san

Code of Princess came in at #2, now, non-existent – what a difference a week makes. FE still going strong; Uprising still selling; Ciel no Surge doing well, next week will see how well it has been received. Just like Ciel no Surge, I want to see how well Conception does next week.

Well… hopefully with most of Golden Week coming up now and a re-stock of Code of Princess might see it climb back up the charts.

kylehyde

Well code of princess sold 72.62 (around 19,000) of their shipment on the previous week so there wasn’t too many units to sell.

usagi_san

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that! Duh! With only about 5,000 units left, it wouldn’t have made a dent to this week’s chart. A re-stock for Golden Week should see it reappearing.

Göran Isacson

Huh. ORC really keeps on selling… makes me wonder what they’re doing so right by the fanbase, since so few review sites think it’s worth anything at all.

Interesting that people don’t seem to think too warmly of Ciel no Surge- I’ve seldom played a Gust game that was outright 31/100 material. Even if I don’t think they’re works of brilliant art, they’ve always been perfectly enjoyable.

Ladius

That is probably one of the many cases of user reviews being used by trolls, a sad reality many Metacritic user scores have experienced here in the west.

As I wrote above, not only did the 4Gamer average improve over time, but Ciel no Surge’s average score on PSN (where only those who actually bought the game can vote) was a 4.375 two days ago, with more than 1000 voters. Here’s a pic.

As expected, Ciel no Surge drove up the Vita sales. And it sold about as much as imagine it would eventually, ahah! Also, FE drop wasn’t huge, which is also good news for the series. And KH is still charting, even tho it already dropped below FE.

Curious to see whether KH DDD will keep on charting for the forthcoming weeks. With Golden week, it’s even bound to move up a couple o’ spots…also, good going for Capcom, RE ORC, despite the criticism it got, managed to snag a top position for at least both the US and JP markets. I did not see that coming!

Ladius

I’m really happy to see Fire Emblem charting so well, the first shipment should be almost exhausted by now and the game was apparently difficult to find. As soon as the next shipment hit, it will probably continue experiencing good sales.

Also, I’m really happy for Ciel no Surge: despite being a new IP and a completely different kind of game from what Gust usually do it still managed to have the best first week of any Gust handheld game, beating all the DS and PSP Atelier titles. I would take the 4Gamer average with a grain of salt, since user scores can easily be manipulated by a minority of haters, as seen in countless Metacritic examples in the west, and apparently the scores have been steadily increasing after the first batch of troll scores.

Code of Princess… yeah, with a 30k shipment it wasn’t realistic to expect it high in the chart in a week with decent sales, but still not having it at all is sad. According to a NeoGaf user (and reviewer on a small site) some kind of localization agreement was unveiled by Agatsuma too soon, forcing a site to delete the news, so it could still come here.

Solomon_Kano

Now THERE’S a surprise. I mean, I know RE’s a big deal and the Japanese are apparently fond of third-person shooters, but I didn’t expect the game to do THIS well. I expected maybe, 100,000 first week. Tops. Shocking.

In other news, I’m glad to see Ciel no Surge and Conception do well. I have no interest in Ciel no Surge, but the Vita has had very few games chart (in part because it has few games at all, I suppose) so it’s nice to see it. Conception looks super interesting though, so I hope that it continues to sell. These aren’t terrific numbers, but it’s off to a good start.

Vyrus

It’s great to see the Vita finally getting some sales. Too bad Code of Princess is not on the list, though. :(

Doesn’t NISA bring over nearly all the Gust titles? I wouldn’t just assume its not coming over here.

Ladius

I suspect the main issue would be the strong online focus of that game, I can’t see it working particularly well in a bigger market with a far more varied online infrastructure situation than the Kanto area. Then again, I don’t think they could completely remove or change it for a western edition, nor do I know how the game’s fans would take such changes.

sandra10

Ciel no Surge is really buggy, I hear. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reason behind the low scores.

Ladius

More than being buggy, they simply had issues with their servers for the first day or so since the users trying to connect were far more than they expected, and apparently those issues have been fixed. Surely it wasn’t great, but this is also Gust’s first experience with this kind of network connectivity and they’re an extremely small company with less than 30 employees.

Also, as said below the game has a 4.375 average score on PSN, with more than a thousand user votes, and on that platform you can vote only if you actually bought the game. Even on 4G the average score has steadily improved after the first batch of marks, which I suspect were due to a mix of trolling (something we westerners experience daily with Metacritic user scores) and the aforementioned day one troubles.

And just imagine all the people that are gonna return this game because they felt that they got tricked in to buying this piece of crap. Thank god reviews exist, or else local game stores would have a hard time dealing with a bunch of angry customers returning games everyday.

Not one bit surprised at the bad reception to Surge Concerto, I saw people going “I dont know what this is about but it’s Gust, it’s Akira Tsuchiya! I’ll definitely buy it” and knew they’d be disapppointed if not angry with what it was. I’m not going to buy it to downvote it but I was definitely disappointed with this direction for Gust and I’ll be skipping right over it to Ayesha and hoping for more great RPGs from them instead of this kinda thing. Kinda pathetic to see people just go HURR TROLLS at a clear reaction to an obviously huge change in direction.

Ladius

With all due respect, not liking a change in direction of a game you haven’t played doesn’t mean that the game itself must be bad, or that you wouldn’t like it if you gave it a chance.

As I pointed out below, I think not even considering the 1000+ user votes on PSN by people who actually bought the game and gave it a 4.375 average score isn’t the right course of action, especially considering how the 4Gamer score is given in a similar way than Metacritic user scores AFAIK, without evidence that the ones voting the game have even played it (we all know how Metacritic user scores have been used by trolls with multiple accounts created only to spawn 0-1 votes in a matter of minutes or by vocal minorities to lower the scores of many games, from AAA games such as Bioware rpgs to niche releases such as Tales of Graces f: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/604158-/62252246 ).

Even then, the legitimate issues with the game had apparently more to do with the server issues of the first days (especially considering this is an online-heavy game and not being able to login temporarily surely pissed off many people, and for good reasons) than with issues with the game’s formula itself, even if obviously people searching for a jrpg wouldn’t like it and, as with every game out there, people are free to dislike it for whatever reason.

I’m not sure about this game (as discussed in other threads, I love the Ar Tonelico vibe and the potential about the setting, but I have yet to understand how the game balances out its elements), I’m not even sure I would like it if it were localized (and, as I pointed out, I think its online reliance could pose a lot of issues), but I also think it’s wrong to automatically bash it or selectively consider only negative opinions simply because it isn’t another Atelier or Ar Tonelico game.

I’m not one of those “originality above all” types, but if this is the result of a developer trying new routes (and with a new IP, they aren’t turning their old series into something else) I can see why most of them are hesitant.

how is this possible … operation raccoon city is great!…at being horrible!

thebanditking

Thats exactly what I was thinking, the game is awful and yet its been selling. I honestly hope the sales drop off quickly because while I don’t want to see Slant 6 go bankrupt I really don’t want Capcom thinking that making a sequel is a good idea either.

man a sequel would be so horrible. i don’t get why capcom is handing over games to western devs…lost planet 3 and spark unlimited (who created the best worst game ever legendary) dmc and ninja thoery and slant 6 and resi evil … what is going on ???????? ….

Domii

To be fair, DmC and LP3 haven’t come out so we can’t judge. Plus DmC is looking better than every DMC game except 3.

ye that is true in terms of we can’t judge it yet. we shall see tho…I’m not too keen on the new DmC … it looks cool and all but, it just feels like a dirty game. the dev life cycle of the game and the publicity and things … it just aint right at all. principle over anything else *END OF FAN RANT* but as for LP true, we can’t judge yet. but capcom is overestimating these companies a tad too much to deal with loved series’

Domii

If DmC delivers it’s promise, I personally don’t care if the developers are a bunch of pigs, I’m buying it. I’ve had every DMC games, LP1, played LP2, and to be honest after the latest installments of both series, I don’t think these new devs can do any worse. Plus Capcom’s inner devs are closely collaborating with Ninja theory on DmC, so we shall see.

boundries_san

Lol this week it seems all kinds of new game is coming at once. (9 games a week? minus Operation Racoon on X-Box 360)

No wonder the whole chart seems to go upside down. But at least, i am still happy seeing FE still gaining third spot which shows that FE franchise is loved by the japanese.^^(Hope that when the game get here, the japanese will give us some break by not using RNG ace againts us on online play.)

Congratz for Ciel no Surge for being able to gain 30k+ sales even though they are facing such a big contender everywhere.

And here i am hoping that my PapaKiki pre-order is going to arrive soon.^^

Many of the low scores for Ciel no Surge are likely due to the ridiculous amount of bugs and network issues that plagued the game in its first few days. It’s essentially an online game, so if the network is down then you can’t do anything.

The bugs were also game breaking. In my case the game misinterpreted the Vita’s clock settings, meaning she’d be asleep when I was awake etc. There’s no way to change that because adjusting the Vita clock has no effect on the game proper.

Fortunately, most of these problems have been ironed out and people seem to be enjoying the game now. I’m just happy I can actually do the story stuff now.